Why Hulk Hogan Matters

by David Shoemaker

A fitting tribute to the most popular and provocative professional wrestler of all time.

Step into the ring as David Shoemaker wrestles with the legacy of the iconic Hulk Hogan. Why Hulk Hogan Matters traces the explosive heat and heel turns of how Hulk Hogan became a true cultural phenomenon.

Whether you’re a lifelong Hulkamanic or fascinated by the Hulk’s truly unique, larger-than-life celebrity, Why Hulk Hogan Matters is the ultimate homage to a legend of the ring.

David Shoemaker has been writing about wrestling since 2009. He is the host of the podcast The Masked Man Show With Kaz and the author of The Squared Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction

Audible Audio

Published July 28, 2026

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Benoit Lelièvre · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not the most anti-AI person on the planet.

I've played with it. I've used it to teach myself skills and I do think that writers will have to learn to work with it sooner than later. But where do you draw the line? Selling something that bears little to no trace of a human voice for starter. You just can't do that. I feel terrible that my review only discusses this topic, but I can't explain how in the name of everything beautiful this book has made it through the editorial process. It's not even subtle. Anyone who has toyed with ChatGPT a little bit will recognize it.

I love this author and I've been following him for years, but he had a good on Hulk Hogan in him and this not his. This is not the way to do things.

[Jon Barr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Look, I get that I'm part at a small and specific target audience, but this book was perfect. I consumed it mostly in one setting on a long flight from Philadelphia to Dallas and loved it.

[Brett Milam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hulk Hogan still matters, perhaps most powerfully as a cautionary tale about what happens when artifice becomes edifice. With Hulk Hogan, who had the moniker “Immortal,” what became unyielding to the sands of time was his inability to extricate himself from the role he played. Even Terry Bollea (Hogan’s real name), did the “job” (lost) in service to Hogan’s insatiable need for relevance. David Shoemaker is the preeminent writer in wrestling’s squared circle, and his newest book, Why Hulk Hogan Matters, explores the highs and lows of Hogan’s career and post-ring life to argue the titular thesis at each inflection point. Stripped to its essence, Hogan mattered as an idea, both in wrestling and wider American pop culture, until the idea of Hogan ceased to matter anymore. For someone whose lifeforce depended on relevance, it was a death knell before his actual death on July 24, 2025.

Shoemaker is my favorite writer in professional wrestling because he’s a genuinely good, serious writer about an inherently goofy passion of ours. He’s one of those writers I naturally want to quote every other sentence he writes, so I’ll limit myself to a few throughout what follows. It also feels right that Shoemaker wrote this book on Hogan after his death because Shoemaker’s career writing about professional wrestling started through death: chronicling the deaths of wrestlers, including with his first book, 2013’s The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling, which I previously reviewed, a broader look at wrestling through the ages and its meaning to wrestling fans. After all, while pro wrestling is inherently goofy — a predetermined theatrical, but athletic, soap opera where we’re all willing, desirous “marks” to the carnival barkers — it still means a lot to those of us who consume it precisely because it makes us feel something. Whether it’s an exercise in real life catharsis or escapism from real life, wrestling provides an outlet, and importantly, because it doesn’t have a traditional “off season,” it’s always there. That is integral to my own love of pro wrestling. Whatever may be going on in my life, I can always count on professional wrestling being there. And whether the reason we buy-in to pro wrestling as willing marks is because of the aspirational (larger-than-life characters akin to superheroes) or living vicariously through heroes more readily accessible (underdogs), wrestling offers a unique blend of storytelling that is part electric where you have to be in the moment to experience it and part bone marrow-deep where it embeds on our memories and reminds us of why we’re fans in the first place. Or as Shoemaker explains wrestling fandom so eloquently, “The most devoted fans were those who could see the strings and still weep when the puppet died.” For many wrestling fans, Hulk Hogan represented the pinnacle of larger-than-life, electric, bone marrow-deep storytelling for decades in professional wrestling, both through his decade run in WWF (now WWE) as its triumphant hero and his shocking reinvention as a cool heel in late ’90s WCW. Which only served to make his downfall, the cautionary tale of his saga, all the more bittersweet for his fans. (I’ve enjoyed Hogan’s big wrestling matches and moments in WWF, while not having seen much of his WCW run, admittedly, but I would not count myself among his fans.)

Hogan’s wrestling career beats are well-trodden territory — but for newer or nonfans: his initial run under Vince McMahon’s father in the then-WWWF; his AWA run, where Hulk Hogan showed what was to come in WWF under McMahon, buoyed by his appearance in Rocky III as Thunderlips; upon returning to WWF, his title win from the Iron Sheik in Madison Square Garden, January 1983; the pinnacle of Hulkamania, slamming André the Giant at WrestleMania III; the Mega Powers exploding at WrestleMania V; the seeming “passing of the torch” to the Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VI; overstaying his welcome by WrestleMania IX with Bret Hart; the return of the “red and yellow” but in WCW in the pre-New World Order days; the July 1996 heel turn at Bash in the Beach; the politicking-infused bad booking that culminated the feud with Crow Sting in 1997; Goldberg’s triumphant, if poorly followed through, defeat of Hogan in 1998; the Finger Poke of Doom in 1999; coming back “home” to now-WWE in 2002, with one last nostalgic run with the World Title; and then subsequent returns, including one last nostalgic echo in 2005, and ultimately, a final appearance on WWE’s flagship show, Raw, when it debuted on Netflix in January 6, 2025, where Hogan was booed vociferously by the crowd in what is deemed “go-away heat,” or non-storyline booing — but what makes Shoemaker’s brief overview of those career beats compelling (aside from his aforementioned writing prowess) is the way in which time has allowed for a better rendering of those moments, often more than what conventional wisdom states, and how each beat offers a reason Hogan mattered, according to Shoemaker.

In short, Hogan mattered to pro wrestling in the early 1980s, as a reflection of American culture at the time, to be a vehicle for its cable television-aided expansion from a regional, territorial system into a national and eventually global business. He mattered again in WCW when he finally allowed himself to lean into what people thought Terry Bollea was doing behind-the-scenes anyway (politicking, exerting creative control) and in so doing, changing with the fans’ new appetites and expectations for pro wrestling. He mattered again in his late 2002-2003 run by closing the narrative arc with WWE by returning home and ultimately feuding with Vince McMahon in a worked-shoot way (an intentional blending of real life emotions with storytelling) over who had “authorship” of WWE’s success: Hogan or McMahon. They were both necessary; again, Hogan as the vessel, and McMahon as the vision for what wrestling could be with that vessel, or as Shoemaker referred to him, Hogan was scalable in in a way few wrestlers had ever been and was a “logo that talked.” In other words, at least in the way McMahon envisioned pro wrestling, it wasn’t about moral complexity, but about emotional clarity with contrast, to paraphrase Shoemaker, and that type of clarity with contrast is scalable beyond language and countries, hence making WWE a national and then global brand. It is notable that both Hogan and McMahon would flame out, overstay their welcome, and become enveloped in scandals of their own doing.

Inevitability, Hogan reminds me of another artifact of the 1980s that is somehow still around with us today: Donald Trump. A lot has been made of how much the Trump years have been like pro wrestling, with Trump as showman and people buying in to his schtick (and indeed, Trump was enmeshed with WWE at various points, both in the ’80s and later in 2007, with the “Battle of the Billionaires” opposite McMahon), although like Hogan, eventually the showman buys into the schtick and it becomes reality. Like Trump, though, Hogan was notorious for being a pathological liar, about both big and small matters, and lies when the truth is so obvious. Such lying is particularly odious and bewildering when the truth itself is already significant. As an example with Trump, he won the presidency in 2016 and 2024, but he has to lie and inflate both wins beyond the facts. With Hogan, slamming André the Giant at WrestleMania III is already a substantial moment in the history of professional wrestling (nearly 40 years later, some would say it’s still an unmatched moment), but Hogan has to inflate it in myriad ways (the crowd size, André’s intentions, injuries sustained in the slamming). Also like Trump, who still thinks of himself as an outsider, a non-politician, despite being in his second term as president and presiding as the head of the GOP for a decade, Hogan never saw himself as politicking backstage with creative control because he saw it as common sense. Most incisive for this comparison, Shoemaker writes of Hogan after a bad appearance on Arsenio Hall’s show where he tried to diminish his steroid-taking, “Hogan always seemed less interested in reckoning than in recalibrating the story until it felt survivable.” That would become Hogan’s salient modus operandi when his sex tape was revealed in 2012, which wasn’t even the headline per se, as it was the abhorrently racist remarks he made on the tape. Even then, for Hogan, it was never about apologizing, but rather, trying to survive and outlast the damage (indeed, when Hogan did ultimately return to WWE, as Shoemaker notes, he spoke in front of the locker room, but instead of offering an apology, it became a warning about hidden cameras). Likewise, Trump’s life, especially his political career, has been marked by survivability rather than any iota of reckoning or accountability. Of course, my comparison between Trump and Hogan is more readily obvious to me after Hogan appeared at the Republican National Convention in 2024 in support of Trump, and even in that context, was doing his schtick and bleeding 1980s nostalgia (which is fitting for Trump, who seems permanently stuck in 1980s New York). Shoemaker rightly points out, though, that Hogan again misread the room, as he had with Arsenio Hall’s audience: 1980s Hogan was intentionally ambiguous so he could be a hero for all (scalability!), whereas at the RNC, he chose a side. But even when Hogan ceases to matter, like at the January 6, 2025, episode of Raw, he matters because it’s Hogan not mattering. Such is the paradoxical gravitational pull of Hogan.

While I started this review calling Hogan’s story a cautionary tale, Shoemaker ends his book arguing that is too tidy a takeaway. Shoemaker sees Hogan’s post-wrestling career in particular as more about narcissism and the “awkward sin of insistence.” (Another parallel to Trump, all about excess, narcissism, and an unbearable insistence.) All of which, in my humble opinion, still feels like a cautionary tale: Hogan mattered to pro wrestling at various points in its history until he didn’t matter anymore, at which point, Hogan’s performative excess and insistence ran out of spotlight runway, so much so, that he tied his dwindling relevance to a more polarizing, odious relevance (Trump) in his final years. So, yes, as Shoemaker says, there’s certainly still a “never meet your heroes” element (indeed, Shoemaker, moments before finally interviewing Hogan, ran into the legend in the bathroom attaching his hair extensions underneath his trademark bandana), but by necessity now, we’re back to the 1980s with Hogan, if you’re wrestling fan of his, where one must forget the existence of Terry Bollea and embrace the larger-than-life ambiguity of Hulk Hogan the character. The bittersweet irony is that Bollea probably would have embraced that attitude because for him, Bollea did die in the 1980s.

[Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the book in one sitting. Shoemaker does a great job painting a picture of Hogan. There are a number of factual errors in the book which led me to rate it lower.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shoemaker is my favorite wrestling writer and there is an interesting angle at the core of the book. However, between the constant repetition of ideas/phrases and the factual errors, this didn’t land for me. It just didn’t add enough to the conversation.

[Rob Harvilla]

(This is out in July, it kicks ass, preorder it ASAP, here's an excerpt.)

Inside the Silverdome, the enormous crowd booed André’s entrance in such indignant unison that it sounds like static. André and Heenan enter standing in a parade float that looks like a miniature wrestling ring. They used them for most of the entrances that night, but they were created specifically for André—he was too worn down to even make the long walk from the back into the ring. Hogan eschewed the cart; he marched into the ring under his own power to the strains of “Real American,” his official theme song that had replaced “Eye of the Tiger.” (“Real American” was written by Rick Derringer, known for “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo,” for the WWF’s 1985 The Wrestling Album. It had actually been written for the tag team The U.S. Express, but the team left the company and Hogan took possession of the song—and the sentiment—in December of that year.) This is the most iconic Hogan entrance ever. Whereas a normal person would seem smaller in an arena that size, Hogan somehow grows to fill it. Even in a venue that huge, he has charisma and energy to spare.

The match itself unfolds like a story that knows its ending but refuses to rush there. André dominates early, leaning on Hogan, chopping him, using his mass as a weapon. Hogan sells the weight, collapsing under it, making each step look like an argument with his own legs. This is important, because selling is the art of making the audience complicit. Hogan’s pain gives the crowd permission to worry, and worry is the currency of drama. If Hogan looks invulnerable, the slam means nothing. If he looks breakable, the slam becomes a miracle.

When Hogan finally begins to rally, the crowd noise shifts from roar to chant, from awe to encouragement. This is the moment wrestling does what it does best: it turns spectators into participants without ever breaking the fourth wall. The chant is not for Hogan to win; it is for Hogan to try. The crowd wants to see the attempt, the honest confrontation with gravity. This is a moral struggle, and victory is almost beside the point.

The slam comes almost out of nowhere. André charges, Hogan sidesteps, and suddenly the giant is horizontal, if only for a heartbeat. Hogan scoops him up, muscles straining, the camera cutting just enough to hide the mechanics while preserving the illusion. The Silverdome erupts, and for a second the building itself seems to lift. In Hogan’s retelling, he tore a biceps and hurt his back performing the slam. The move is not elegant; it is desperate, ugly, human. That’s why it works. Perfection would have cheapened it. Effort sanctifies it.

After the slam, the leg drop is almost an afterthought, a procedural necessity. Hogan pins André, the referee counts, and history is declared. But the pin is not the climax. The climax was the lift, the moment when the rules of the universe appeared to bend. Everything after that is paperwork.

It is tempting to read the match as a simple allegory of American optimism, the triumph of will over circumstance, the small guy beating the big guy, even though Hogan was never the small guy in any meaningful sense. But that reading misses the sadness baked into the spectacle. André’s loss was not just the end of a streak; it was the end of a way of being. André was an icon of a bygone era, the territorial era in pro wrestling when there were twenty different pro wrestling “realities” around the country at any given time. An era in which fantastical creatures like André the Giant roamed the earth, moving from territory to territory to find the next willing audience, and where the only notion a fan might have of André was from word of mouth or a photo in a black-and-white wrestling magazine. It felt like a permanent way of being at the time, until there came cable television and Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan. André was the invulnerable, unknowable old school, and that establishment was being hoisted high in the sky in the Silverdome. The mountain had been moved, and in doing so, admitted it could be moved. There is a melancholy to that admission, a recognition that even the most protected myth eventually pays rent to reality.

WrestleMania III also marked a turning point in how wrestling understood itself. The event proved that wrestling could sell moments as effectively as matches, that a single image could anchor an entire industry. It validated the idea that wrestling’s greatest currency was shared memory. People remember where they were when Hogan slammed André the way people remember where they were for moon landings or title-clinching home runs. Wrestling, often derided as fake, had found a way to make itself feel permanent.

In the years that followed, wrestling would chase that feeling with diminishing returns. Bigger stadiums, louder pyrotechnics, more elaborate stunts. Everyone wanted their own Silverdome moment, their own photograph that could stand in for an era. For its part, the WWF tried to repeat the moment between Hogan and André again and again in the following eighteen months. But moments are not scalable. They depend on timing, on bodies being in the right place at the right moment, on audiences being ready to believe. Hogan and André met at the exact intersection of need and possibility. Move the match a year earlier or later, and it loses some of its voltage.

There is also the uncomfortable truth that the match’s power is inseparable from its artifice. The slam was possible because André allowed it, because wrestling is a collaboration disguised as conflict. But that does not diminish the moment so much as it clarifies it. Wrestling’s magic lies in its honesty about effort even when the outcome is predetermined. Hogan still had to lift André. André still had to endure the fall. The pain was real, even if the story was scripted.

Watching the match now, with decades of context and a more skeptical eye, you can see the seams. You can see André’s limitations, Hogan’s theatrics, the camera angles doing their part. You can also see something else: two men giving their bodies to a story larger than themselves. André’s body, failing and finite, becomes a vessel for a !nal act of wonder. Hogan’s body, honed and heroic, pushed beyond its limitations, becomes a bridge between possibility and fulfillment.

On that night, maybe more than any other, Hulk Hogan mattered because he could sell the dream and embody the dreams of a population. WrestleMania III is less about who won than about what was proven. Wrestling proved it could create a communal myth that transcended its own mechanics. It proved that belief is not about ignorance but about consent. The crowd knew, on some level, that this was a show. They also knew, on a deeper level, that shows can matter.

The photographs endure because they capture that contradiction. Hogan’s face is a mask of strain; André’s body is a testament to trust. The image says: This is hard, and it is meaningful. That might be the most honest thing wrestling has ever said.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to this book due to my love of wrestling and Hogan being such a central figure when I got into wrestling in 1986. There are some great points made here and in parts it is very well written. I enjoyed the explanation of the juxtaposition of the Fingerpoke of Doom being on the same night as Mankind's title win. I also liked the explanation of how Hogan, even at the peak of his babyface run, often wrestled like a heel. The author brings up that this may have been because Hogan was trained as a heel by Hiro Matsuda and never really changed his style. There are several insights like this that made me look at parts of Hogan's career differently.

The problem is the book is brief and often reads like a scholarly explanation of events wrestling fans are already familiar with. This would be too much to keep up with if you did not already have some knowledge of these stories and storylines, however there are not enough pages to really get deep into the subject matter. It feels like Cliff's Notes of Hogan's career, though it does hit all the highlights. It does not go move for move through matches like some wrestling books mistakenly do, but some feuds and periods seem skipped over entirely. There is no mention of the Kamala feud and WrestleMania VII and VIII are skipped.

I feel like this would have been better set up following the style of the FAQ books, taking a few unique topics about Hogan and doing a deep dive. I understand the challenges the author was under. Hogan was never a reliable historian and his career has been covered in many wrestling and non-wrestling produced documentaries. I would have loved if the book expanded on some stories that have never really been given their time in a book outside of Wrestling Observer articles, such as the Paul Orndorff feud, the Terry Funk feud, the Mr. America storyline or Hogan's TNA run.
One of my favorite parts is when Shoemaker discusses interviewing Hogan and researching questions he thought Hogan had never been asked before. The interview went so well that Hogan repeated some of the stories throughout the rest of his press tour. Shoemaker writes, "When Hulk Hogan finds a routine that works, he replays it for every crowd." I loved this and thought it was a great insight into the mind of a wrestler. There are moments like this throughout the book where I wished Shoemaker had more room to expand on his ideas.

I don't feel I can recommend the book, other than if you want a quick read and some Hogan nostalgia. There have been other books that explain many of these stories in greater detail, such as Say Hello to the Bad Guys: How Professional Wrestling's New World Order Changed America by Marc Raimondi and Bigger Better Badder: WrestleMania III and the Year It All Changed by Keith Elliot Greenberg.
I hate rating a book this low, especially because Shoemaker feels like a great writer and does a great job hitting the highlights of Hogan's career. However, the book feels like a publisher wanted a quick book for people to read following Hogan's death and the author wanted to take the job.

Recommended for those who want a quick weekend read and nostalgia trip on Hogans career. You will need to google search or do a wrestling observer deep dive if you are wanting a look at backstage politics or match ratings. Possibly not as bad as the number lets on but not what I was looking for.

[Zach Koenig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professional wrestling is largely a non-serious business. David Shoemaker does some serious analysis of Hulk Hogan as both a pop culture and all-too-human figure in Why Hulk Hogan Matters. It still works wonderfully because Shoemaker isn't self-serious (a key distinction) and his analysis is unique to the usual pro wrestling literature.

For a very basic overview, Why Hulk Hogan Matters is a chapter-by-chapter examination of the key events of Hogan's wrestling career. But this isn't "blow by blow" with behind-the-scenes stories abounding. The scant 150 total page count certainly doesn't allow for that. For each event (time in AWA, beating the Iron Sheik, the Andre match, Savage feud, Warrior clash, NWO, etc.), Shoemaker looks at what Hogan meant in the wrestling business and the pop culture landscape.

At first, this approach can seem a little puzzling, as ring rats may not be used to such polished prose or waxing socio-politically about these topics. But it may grow on you (it certainly did for me) quite quickly. Why? Because the analysis is so unique in the realm. Those 80s/90s events are now so firmly entrenched in the pop culture realm that many tomes can simply repeat them and sell like hotcakes. Not so with Shoemaker.

Here, he earnestly tries to end every chapter living up to the book's title--explaining why the Hulkster mattered in each larger-than-life scenario. What stood out to me the most was Shoemaker's tracking of Hulk's path up to the Andre pinnacle, and then how every career move after that was essentially trying (sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing) to reach those heights again. Of course, Shoemaker also confirms every other Hogan analysis of late that at a certain point his real-life Terry Bollea personage became inexplicably intertwined with the in-ring Hogan. All fascinating stuff.

So, I can give Why Hulk Hogan Matters the full five stars simply because it has the courage to "attack" Hogan analysis from a fresh perspective (and the intelligence to do so thoughtfully). If this were the only Hogan bio out there it would of course be an enormous failure. But using the previous analysis (and over-analysis) of "everything Hogan" over the years, Shoemaker effectively surfs over that wave and crests to interesting heights elsewhere.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought from evil empire.

I'm ambivalent about this. Maybe like a 3.7? Shoemaker knows the history, and the mythology, and the inside stories, and the locker-room gossip, and he's been thinking about this topic for decades. He's full of excellent, cogent epigrams about the collision/collusion between fantasy and reality that wrestling has been both staging and experiencing over the past forty years, and his larger argument about the various battles in which the Hulkster has engaged (we get a narrative of his rise, ascension to global megastardom, stagnation, and eventual reinvention via the famous heel turn), though oddly not a mention of his death. The best lines are worth clipping, such as the note in the last chapter that "he once felt less like a wrestler than a federally mandated mascot."

But phrasings and ideas are repeated, the number of "these people mistook x for y" formulations is off the charts, and it feels like we get stuck not in a conceptual loop, but in about three of them--lies and truth, and inadvertent reveals of lies that uncover a truth; Hogan as billboard for a simpler vision of America; Hogan as an unrepentant liar and self-mythologizer even for a wrestler. It's engaging and smart, but it also feels somehow hermetic, as if the point is to tie Hogan to narratives and meta-narratives and changes within the organization and structure of wrestling itself and just to nod to the things that go on in the culture more generally that at various times abet and challenge his self-presentation. Also the second consecutive book I've read that contains weird Trump connections, since Raftery's book about Hannibal Lecter opens and closes with Trump's addled, random mentions of "the late, great" cannibal on the campaign trail. Once the stain of him is gone, cultural historians are going to have a field day unpacking, if that's the word, the latent content of his free-associative rants.

[Tony Farinella · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Shoemaker is an exceptional writer. He possesses a remarkable talent for using words to paint a vivid and engaging story. As a wrestling enthusiast, I’ve witnessed the events retold in the book many times, but Shoemaker’s writing style sets him apart from other authors. Despite not gaining any new insights or knowledge, I found myself captivated throughout the book.

My biggest gripe is why was the book so small? It was only 153 pages. It felt more like a pamphlet than a book. This book could have easily been 300 plus pages. I’m not sure why he decided to make such a short book about such a legendary figure in the wrestling industry.

Shoemaker makes his points and makes them quickly, and I was never bored while reading this book. I just wish he would’ve taken the time to write a proper book with more details and more depth. Make no mistake about it, Hulk Hogan made a lot of mistakes in his wrestling career and in his personal life. I would never defend what he’s done, especially outside the ring. However, I’ve always been a firm believer in separating the art from the artist. Professional wrestling probably doesn’t exist in the way it does today without Hulk Hogan.

As stated previously, my biggest gripe with the book was its length. My second biggest gripe is the errors: Hulk Hogan did NOT win the 1992 Royal Rumble, Flair/Hogan did happen in the WWF, but it was on house shows and it didn’t perform well, which is why the WWF never had it on their television programs, and Shoemaker also claimed Hogan debuted on a WCW Nitro in 1994, even though Nitro didn’t debut until 1995.

I’m giving it four stars because of the writing style and because the author tied all of his pieces together very eloquently.

[Matt Lowy · Rating 2 out of 5]

True (Often referred to As Hardcore) wrestling fans read non-fiction wrestling books not to really learn anything new as the majority of 'Front of the Camera' efforts are well grained in our minds but to gain a different perspective or perhaps gain insight into the story within the story. This book does achieve that in terms of the thesis as despite going out on an all-time low in his death, Hulk Hogan / Terry Bollea does indeed matter in the larger picture of the world as we know it.

What the book fails to do is so ironic with the laziness/deception of storytelling that the subject matter is now eternally notorious for. There were two moments in the book where I stopped cold with 'That's not true at all' (The Hogan/Warrior showdown being in the 1992 Royal Rumble vs the 1990 RR that it actually was AND a June 1994 episode of Monday Night Nitro being cited when the show did not even premiere until September 1995). It was that moment that you feel like the first time you saw 'The Sixth Sense' when you see all the deception of the time you invested. All of the double-hypens, semi-colon broken sentences that come with generative AI crafting and editing were there the whole time but then you can't unsee it. You question how much of this observational history the author even crafted himself. Shame on Mr. Shoemaker for the lazy writing, shame on Harper Collins for such 'look the other way' editing and not even dressing it up and shame on the great Bill Simmons for marketing the book with an author interview on his podcast which led me to read this in the process. If this is the future of sports literature, what a disgrace to the profession history will judge us.

[John Schorg · Rating 3 out of 5]

From this book, it's pretty obvious that Hulk Hogan really matters to the author, who paints a generally interesting portrait of one of the primary figures in the evolution of professional wrestling from what it was to what it has become now.

In his time, Hogan did have his moments, but most of that career became clouded with his performances in the ring, his politicking outside the ring, and his generally obnoxious behavior outside the sport entirely.

It is possible to recognize his place in the history of wrestling, while decrying that place in moving the industry to what it is now... too much talk, and too much repetitive action without the storytelling abilities that drew so many people to watch it in the first place.

The writing of wrestling's history has resulted in some great books, and while this isn't a great book... it is a little too forgiving of Hogan for my taste... it is a worthy addition to the collection.

[Kevin Muir · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good book, POOR RESEARCH

Sloppy, doesn't break any ground, read Hogan's wiki page and save your money. It basically just chronicles Hogan's career as we know it, you're not going to learn anything new if you already know the Hulk Hogan story. However the author carelessly writes in the chapter about Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior as "The irresistible force meets the immovable object" that was Hulk vs. Andre, not only does he get it wrong, he writes three paragraphs about it. There are sections where the timeline jumps back for seemingly no reason, like he forgot and instead of going back and putting the piece where it belonged he just left it where it was. Also several years are misquoted. The author likes to use big words to try to make the book more than it is, it doesn't work. For such a simple book with very little depth, the author didn't do much research or just got sloppy with edits. Read if you want to.

[Jason Weber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book 38 of 2026

Hulk Hogan is on the Mt Rushmore of Pro Wrestling period. I’m not talking about Terry Bollea, I’m talking Hulk in the ring. Not too many people/athletes can say they are bigger than the sport, but Hogan was bigger than wrestling. During the original Hulkamania run, he was HUGE. Everyone, EVERYONE knew who he was. From kids to moms to grandmas.
Then to re-in went himself as Hollywood with the NWO, taking WCW to the top of the ratings war for 83 weeks!
Even in 2002 against The Rock, the fans were cheering for Hogan.

This book was a quick, fun read, and an interesting look at Hulk Hogan’s career!
Recommended for any wrestling fan.

[Kevin Dorsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

While filled with editing issues out the wazoo, WHY HULK HOGAN MATTERS does provide an insightful history lesson about the how, when, where, and—most importantly—why. I knew most of this story, but Shoemaker’s writing style kept the book interesting. The book does culminate in what I found to be a very emotional final chapter. Hogan was about as flawed as it gets, but his story is a cautionary tale for any public figure on how not to handle the in-between stages of life and afterlife.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is excellently written and extremely fair, and I appreciate the author’s acknowledgment that Hulk Hogan was a terrible person.

I’m getting too old for a lot of stuff in my life and one theme keeps coming back to me… we need to stop celebrating terrible people. The less written about Hulk Hogan, especially now that he’s dead, the better.

[John Chancey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short read about the rise and fall of Hulk Hogan’s cultural relevancy. It’s hard to imagine a bigger fall from grace than Hogan’s. Even when he played the part of the heel in WCW he was still a compelling figure in pop culture. By the time he passed he become a shill for MAGA and the Trump Admin.

[J LaB · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is pretty brutal with many parts clearly written by AI. It's full of misinformation, such as Hogan winning the title from Yokuzuna in Japan. I can't believe an editor didn't catch all of these errors. Really bad stuff all around here but someone like Hulk Hogan deserves a book this poorly done.

[Anthony Luckie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shoemaker got his start in wrestling media by writing honest accounts of flawed heroes. He does it again here. It’s not a love letter to Hulk Hogan, but rather, a frank discussion of Hogan’s undeniable mark on pro wrestling - while acknowledging his warts that are so big it can be argued they took their vitamins and said their prayers to get that way.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shoemaker's insightful book on an 80's icon makes for surprisingly engaging reading, especially the chapters on Bollea's later years a "reality" TV star, his infamous sex tape that ended the media outfit Gawker, and his "to a point" racism. The book even has a Raging Bull-like coda.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief but insightful biography

Hogan's wrestling career spanned close to 40 years so it could be argued that this book could be longer. The writer though wisely avoids covering every feud he had and instead tries to note key moments in the characters' timeline. A good explanation of how and why he changed.

[Joth Bhullar · Rating 2 out of 5]

“The 1980s was an era of restoration fantasies: strength regained, pride reclaimed, order reasserted. Ronald Reagan sold America a story about itself & Hulk Hogan was Reaganism without policy.”

Banger 🔨

(But most of the book is very poorly written & feels like ChatGPT outputs)

[Joseph Randazzo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay. Hulk hogan was a bad person but an important figure in the overall culture. A lot of these stories have been told a lot already, and are probably more interesting if you’re not in tune with wrestling. I just don’t know if that person is picking this type of book up.

[Tim Crisp · Rating 5 out of 5]

No one writes about professional wrestling better than David Shoemaker.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Significantly better and more interesting than the Netflix documentary series.

[Jamie Morris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Of all the books that I’ve read, this was the most recent.
Always have enjoyed Shoemaker but this barely qualifies as a book.

[thesuperrookie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best wrestling writer in the game. He matters because Hulk at one time did.

[Sean Spurge · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.25 stars